The World

Meir had focused on the rising terrorism against Israel. On 6 September 1972, Palestinian terrorists seized eleven Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics. The terrorists were members of Black September, a unit formed by Arafat to hit Israel after King Hussein’s defeat of the PLO in September 1970. At least one hostage was castrated; all eleven Israelis and nine terrorists were killed when the West German rescue attempt ended in a catastrophic shootout. Two days later Meir formed Committee X to direct Operation Wrath of God to assassinate the twenty leaders behind Black September: in October, as the assassinations started, the Angel’s warnings became urgent.

Sadat and Assad met in Alexandria and summoned King Hussein, concealing the imminence of the planned assault but inviting him to join. On 25 September 1973, the king flew to Tel Aviv and warned Golda that the Syrians would attack. ‘Are they going to war without the Egyptians?’ she asked.

‘They’ll cooperate,’ replied the Hashemite. It sounded like a trap. Golda and Dayan believed the Arabs would never dare attack so soon after 1967.

On 6 October, the Arab armies caught Israel by surprise, pushing back Israeli forces from the Suez Canal and storming Israeli positions on Golan. Their air forces hit their targets, their hand-held Soviet Sagger missiles crippled Israeli armour, their anti-aircraft missiles brought down Israeli planes. The Syrians broke through Israeli positions; in desperate fighting, a few Israeli tanks just held the Syrians. But the Egyptians, with different aims, halted and dug in, letting Israeli throw everything at the Syrians.

By 8 October, Dayan was so downhearted he told Golda that Israel was in peril, asking, ‘Is it the end of the Third Temple?’ – his coded way of suggesting they might need to use nuclear weapons (code: Temple). Meir ordered the arming of thirteen tactical devices. Meir desperately asked Nixon for military supplies; Sadat and Assad requested more weapons from Brezhnev; both airlifted weapons to their proxies. But the worst was over: on the 9th the Syrians retreated. On the 11th, Israeli tanks counter-attacked and broke through, heading towards Damascus. On the 15th, Israeli forces crossed the Canal into Egypt and surrounded Sadat’s Third Army. Suddenly Cairo was imperilled. Sadat panicked, appealing to Nixon and Brezhnev, together or separately, to send soldiers to stop the Israelis, who kept advancing.

On the evening of 24 October, Brezhnev told Nixon, ‘I will say it straight that if you find it impossible to act jointly with us in this matter, we’d face the necessity to consider taking appropriate steps unilaterally.’ Brezhnev dispatched airborne divisions towards Egypt. Kissinger rushed to the White House. ‘What’s going to stop them,’ he asked, ‘flying in paratroopers? Shall I wake the president?’ But the soused president had passed out, ‘distraught’ about the growing clamour for his impeachment. Kissinger, now secretary of state, asked Sadat to withdraw his request for Soviet and American intervention and reassured Brezhnev, but he moved nuclear readiness to DEFCON 3. Brezhnev was shaken. Sadat withdrew his request; Brezhnev sent a conciliatory message as Kissinger shuttled between the combatants, finding Meir a ‘preposterous woman’, Assad surly and Sadat admirable. Assad and Sadat had both won respect but used it differently. Assad had moved to extend Syrian power into Lebanon, position himself as chief enemy of Israel and found a dynasty. As for Sadat, Kissinger thought he ‘had the wisdom and courage of the statesman and occasionally the insight of a prophet’. Now he would risk everything to make peace.^*

King Faisal now unsheathed the oil weapon, orchestrating an OPEC price rise and production cut. The ensuing oil crisis threatened to break the west. American vulnerability meant that in future it would fight to maintain access to oil. As for the Saudis, price rises showered Croesan wealth on the family as they embraced the double life of Wahhabi puritans at home and decadent sybarites abroad, splurging on yachts, palaces and call girls as well as monumental modernization and new armaments, much of the latter fixed by the son of Abdulaziz’s doctor, Adnan Khashoggi, a globe-trotting playboy nicknamed the Pirate whose commissions made him the ‘richest man in the world’. The House of Saud had joined the arbiters of the world, just as the House of Solomon was disintegrating.

On 12 September 1974, at his Jubilee Palace, the eighty-one-year-old Emperor Haile Selassie was amazed to confront a posse of young radical officers: what were they doing in his apartment? They told him he was under arrest. He did not believe them.

DID KING DAVID RETIRE? THE NEGUS AND MAJOR MENGISTU